Service Quality Methods and Practices to Improve Library Administration: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify the differentiated services university libraries are able to offer students by prioritizing service quality factors using the various dimensions and factors of service quality. The paper proposes a study that adopts the Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (PZB) service quality model to construct a model for measuring the service quality of a university library. The study conducts analysis using an expert questionnaire and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to identify students’ needs with respect to the library’s service quality. This study covered 44 different graduate institutes, but it is aimed at postgraduate student-oriented university libraries, which may not reveal the real status of different types of libraries. The five dimensions of service quality identified in this study by order of importance are responsiveness, tangibility, reliability, assurance, and empathy. The first three criteria of the twenty-two assessment criteria are “The staff is unwilling to help students”, “The library’s facilities match up with the type of services” and “Students are unable to receive fast services from staff”. This article seeks to provide innovative methods for previous library management in the university library and the research results could also provide useful references with social implications and novel value to the university library’s management team to improve the library’s service quality.

Keywords

• service quality
• Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (PZB)
• analytic hierarchy process (AHP)
• university library